


To be Heard

by YourTrueNemesis



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: All of the characters are just mentioned, Angst, Except for Marius this is his POV, Existential Angst, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Barricade, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, This is pure rambling, honestly i have no idea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 14:11:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17469080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YourTrueNemesis/pseuds/YourTrueNemesis
Summary: Looking back on his life, Marius can't seem to remember a moment in time when someone truly heard him.Now it's too late.He has nothing to say.





	To be Heard

Marius doesn’t really remember his parents. He sometimes has vague, flashy memories of his forehead being kissed, or of his father lifting him up to to reach a book on the shelf. He remembers quiet words in many languages… but not much else. He doesn’t remember what they look like really. Any photographs they had were left behind when his grandfather took him in.

He wishes--in quiet moments alone--that his grandfather had never stolen him from his father (at the time, his younger self had thought that his father had abandoned him. He now knows that that is further from the truth then anything he could have imagined). But simply wishing rarely does anything _~~as Enjolras was always reminding him no no don’t think about him~~_.

His grandfather’s house was, for lack of a better word, quiet. There had been a cobweb covered hush to the austere hallways and grand, sweeping staircases, as if no one had dared to disturb the silence for centuries.

There was no comfort in that house. His face scrubbed raw when his Aunt noticed the tiniest speck of real or imagined dirt on his cheek, a ruler rapped across is knuckles when he mispronounced something during lessons, the constant reminder that “children should be seen and not heard”--these were the constants of his childhood. Gone were the forehead kisses and bedtime stories of his parents.

He knew that he was to become a lawyer, even as a child, but that was never any excitement in it for him, it never felt the same as it did when he spoke English or German. But his grandfather had chosen Marius’ path, and Marius was expected to keep to it. He planned to keep to it too.

But life doesn't always work that way.

He had searched his grandfather’s desk one afternoon (he’s forgotten what he had been looking for in the first place) and found a stack of letters. All addressed to him. His father had written to him, at least once a month, for years. Marius doesn’t remember much about what happened next, blind, quivering rage and panic and the need to get out of that suffocating, lying, quiet house was too strong. But he had grabbed a few meager possessions and left.

It was raining _~~just like it was when she died oh ‘Ponine why~~_ and it was cold and it was wonderful. It felt like something had been growing inside his lungs, an invisible force of strangulation and suddenly the force was gone. The rot that had been ruining the heart in his chest was washed away and he could see clearly for the first time in years.

He had stayed with Courfeyrac, a fellow student, showing up on his doorstep, and, in classic Marius fashion, embarrassing himself immediately by saying, “I’ve come to sleep with you” instead of something normal. But Courfeyrac, lovely, understanding _~~dead~~_ Courfeyrac had let him stay. He’d been a shy, naïve boy, still striving to be seen and not heard, and Courfeyrac had become his first real friend, the first friend not introduced to him by his grandfather, the first friend who hadn’t given up on him. Marius breathed around Courfeyrac.

Marius was so shocked to have a friend, he never thought it would be possible that he’d make another. But the world continued to surprise him. He’d met Eponine a few weeks later. He’d been taking classes at the university, and for the first time in his life he was enjoying himself so much. Eponine had been pulling a scam with her father and practically broken into his apartment, eaten a piece of bread, and left, taking a part of him with her. Marius had made another friend, a rare thing in his life. She was the one who inspired him to grow out his hair, and her quick wits and sarcasm never failed to make him smile.

Courfeyrac had dragged him one evening to a meeting of the Les Amis de l’ABC, and after a disastrous first meeting, he’d gained even more friends, friends of a sort he’d never thought he’d make. Revolutionaries, people who clawed their way to a better future, who were not content to wallow in the present (well of course there was Grantaire _~~four bullets dead, his heart still pumping his violent adoration for their leader as he lay at Enjolras’ feet~~_ but even he was willing to help under the right circumstances).

And then came Cosette. Beautiful, ethereal Cosette, who stole the breath from his lungs and the voice from his throat in the best way possible from the moment he met her. It finally felt wonderful not to be able to breathe, not at all like his grandfather or aunt. Being breathless around Cosette wasn’t like being silenced, it was more like she’d filled him up with a feeling so powerful that not air could fit in his lovestruck chest. She made him feel giddy, lightheaded and dizzy (this explained the amount of times he’d tripped around her). Cosette was a beautiful angel that he absolutely did not deserve. Cosette felt like being heard.

His friends had mocked him for his love, jostled him around and as much as Marius knew it was friendly teasing, he still worried for their opinions on him and struggled to work even harder to earn their approval.

But something has to go wrong.

Marius always does everything all wrong.

Because after Cosette came the barricade.

His friends had seen him at his worst, seen him wet and bedraggled and covered in someone else’s blood. They’d seen him refuse to let go of Ponine, still brushing her hair out of her face, still kissing her forehead even long after the angry blood in her veins turned to water and the stars in her eyes had dimmed. They had rallied around him, given him support, toasted to her memory, and in the morning, when they ran out of bullets, they hadn’t let him go, recognizing the wild light in his eyes that spoke of reckless heroism. He wishes (he knows that they wish it too) that they had let him go instead of arguing with him. If he had gone, Gavroche _~~tiny young impressionable Gavroche who sang even after he’d been shot~~_ wouldn’t have climbed the barricade, wouldn’t have been shot, wouldn’t be gone.

The chaos after Gavroche’s death was saved in his memory in incomplete sections… he remembers Courfeyrac crying, Grantaire placing a steadying hand on Enjolras’ shoulder, both of them trembling with righteous fury at the loss of the boy they’d adopted into their group. Marius remembers the awful silence that night, the bone deep chill of Gavroche’s final optimistic words.

At dawn, the end of Marius’ world arrived.

It did not stay… not for him.

Marius was the first one shot. He didn’t die ~~_that would be too good for the likes of him_~~ or fall unconscious, but lay in a limbo he could not shake himself from. He couldn’t speak. He was seen but not heard and it was terrifying. It felt as if Marius was under water _~~under blood~~_. He heard Courfeyrac cry out as he saw Marius fall, he heard Enjolras yell for liberty, he heard gunshots and screams and then he heard nothing at all.

The sewers were colder then he would have expected for June, but maybe that was him. It wasn’t all cold, there was blinding heat on the back of his head and at his leg and shoulder, but he felt cold nonetheless. It reminded him of the time he had gotten a high fever when he was young and had spent days in a hazy state of not-being in his bedroom.

He felt himself being moved but couldn’t do anything to stop it. He was far too cold. He felt the cold seep into him, moving from his legs and arms, to his chest, and finally, the cold claimed the space behind his eyes and Marius fell.

Marius woke up in his childhood bedroom, and for a brief moment, he was young and befevered again and waking up alone. But then he saw a head of soft hair resting on the bed sheets next to him and felt a small, delicate hand crushing one of his own and he came back to himself.

Cosette.

Thank God for Cosette.

She’s really the only thing keeping him grounded.

He feels like someone has tipped him over and poured his soul across the boards of the floor, and Cosette is trying her hardest to pour life back into him--that same powerful emotion that had once filled him with breathless delight. But it isn’t working because there are gaping, bleeding holes in his personality ~~_one for each gaping, bleeding hole torn in the bodies of his sleeping friends_~~ that even her tender affections cannot fully patch.

Being in his Grandfather’s house again is difficult, but he is so very tired and he forgets the teachings of his childhood. Marius forgets to be seen and not heard as he cries for the first time in almost a decade in the quiet of that house.

Marius gets better with time. Physically. His arm is in a sling and he limps as he walks but Cosette is always at his elbow, ready to steady him should he fall.

But Cosette cannot be there for him always. She never appears in his dreams anymore. His dreams, which were once fluid, lovely visions of Cosette’s bright eyes and tinkling laughter, are now loud and jarring. Gunshots chase him from the red haze of an imagined barricade into panicked wakefulness. Cosette is there for him then, hearing him as he struggles to explain, her soft hands cupping his cheeks.

He hears her.

But he cannot see her behind the shadow of his guilt.

Marius doesn’t let himself think about the ABC, not on most days at least. But he arrives at the Café Musain and all of his carefully repressed anguish bubbles through him like his blood is boiling, spilling out from all of his gaps and cracks. Dust has gathered on the furniture, the wine stain blood stain has set into the floor and Marius’ vision is flickering.

He sees his friends, laughing and drinking, sprawled across the chairs and tables and floors of the Musain. He hears them talk of revolution, hears Enjolras preaching, and Grantaire mocking him for his fondness for Cosette.

He sees his friends, bloodied and bullet ridden, standing against the walls of the room, stern faces that implore him to admit his guilt. Clearly under the impression that he should have died with them _~~instead of them~~_.

He sees nothing but an empty room.

He sees it all at once.

But the Café Musain is empty, and Marius is empty, and the world is a cold, dark, place when you’re alone.

No one hears Marius as he grieves.


End file.
